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Tuesday, 16 August 2016

summer school

This month I’m taking part in a four week summer school all about pattern design. I’m really enjoying it so far, and
getting into the second brief. Before that’s done though, I wanted to share a bit
here about the first brief and my design for that, as well as what I’m
learning.

What I most appreciate about the summer school
is the community. There is a very active facebook group for all the
participants where we share our work in progress, get feedback as well as share
other helpful tips. Its also very helpful to have a comprehensive design brief
to work with, as well as a deadline that pushes me to complete a design.

The first brief had the theme modern pop art
and I immediately felt out of my depth, since this is a style I haven’t tried
before! I wanted to create something with a clear pop art look, while still
letting my own style shine through. The subject matter was left open, so I
decided to do a kitchen. I started with sketches of different kitchen
utensils, then spent time tracing them with a fineliner, before erasing all
pencil marks, scanning and importing them into inkscape where I traced them and
created individual icons. To pull the design together I decided to make kitchen
cabinets and add hexagon tiles in the background.

One of the creative exercises in class was to create a colouring book page. This was the perfect excuse to print off a few copies of the design in black and white and spend some time with coloured pencils thinking about the colour scheme and colour placement. I don't often print out designs at this stage, just because I don't have a printer and it means a trip to the library, but I really like to do it, since I often see something I wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

At this stage my design looked like this and I asked for some feedback from the other course members:

I got some good feedback and kept working, adding colours and details. I'm glad I did this, even though I was happy with the first draft. I feel like doing this design for a deadline pushed me to make it even better. I needed it to say "pop art" more. Dots always help for that :-) I also added an oven, more colours on the kitchen cabinets, as well as more things happening, a dripping tap, steam coming out of the oven, a pile of flour and music coming from the radio. I feel like the final design tells more of a story. Now it just needs a pop art title, something like: Honey, did you remember to turn off the tap when you took the bread out of the oven? :-)

ps. all the designs from the first design brief of the course are on show here.